This World Won't Last Forever And All That's Left Is You

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Since "Signal in the Sky" was featured on Grey’s Anatomy last year, I’ve been waiting for Matt Hires to release his next full-length album. The EP was a collection any pop music fan would enjoy, with Forever deserving to be chosen as the album title, but I couldn’t get enough with only four songs. And after almost a year, the sophomore album, entitled This World Won’t Last Forever, But Tonight We Can Pretend, was finally released on August 13, 2013. I just found that out this week and immediately downloaded the rest of the album.

Having listened to the eleven songs, I am with those critics saying that This World… sounds jauntier and more mature than Take Us to the Start. Simply as a matter of personal taste, though, I prefer the first album’s simpler arrangements to This World…’s fuller ones. But as always, Hires’ idiosyncratic singing voice is an engaging feature in the album, on top of the hooky melodies and his typical poetic honesty.

As it was with his first album, I find some of the songs in this album highly likeable, like the cryptic "I Am Not Here" and his autobiographical writer's block-themed "When I Was Young", or a more cheerful track like "Miles Past Midnight". And just as with any album, it doesn't take me long to find one I simply fall in love with. Excluding "A to B" and "Signal in the Sky", both of which had appeared in his previous EPs, the winner goes to the somewhat hopeful and tender "All That’s Left Is You". I was intoxicated the first time I heard it and have been addicted since the second. For the last four days I’ve been playing the song over and over again – if not on the music player, in my head! I can't stop listening to the guitar strumming and the mild but influential drumbeats, and I love the fact that he put the words “sunshine state” and “the golden gate”, making the song sound more personal – as he is a Tampa native, and I’ve always loved San Francisco. The sweetest part of the lyric, though, is probably that sentence at the end of the chorus: “Out of all the dreams that could come true, maybe one of them could be you” – beautifully expressed, in a genuine way he always does.

Click here to listen to the album, or click play below to listen to "All That's Left Is You".

Or, watch his music video: